


Salt In The Wound

by curlspen



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Aftermath of Sexual Assault, Aftermath of Torture, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, I Can't Believe I Wrote This, PTSD, Past Abuse, Ramsay Is His Own Trigger Warning, Self Harm, Stockholm Syndrome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-03
Updated: 2019-08-03
Packaged: 2020-07-30 07:49:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20093809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/curlspen/pseuds/curlspen
Summary: Ramsay is dead and Jon is King in The North. Everything should be perfect except Sansa can’t get Ramsay out of her head.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> READ THE TAGS!

Sansa lays on a blanket of snow and gazes up at the sky, blinking the pale sunlight from her eyes. With no sound around her, there is nothing to keep Ramsay's voice out of her head. It swells like a crescendoing percussion in the back of her skull, reverberating over her scalp and tricking down her spine like needles.

_Now you belong to me, just like Reek. Wherever you go, I’ll be there. Branded into your skin, rammed up your cunt, starring in all your dirty little dreams. You’ll never escape me. _

She had snarled at him "You’re nothing to me, bastard!” The memory of what Ramsay did to her for calling him that word makes her pulse quicken and nausea rise but still it was his words that had chipped away at her certainty, at her sanity.

_Show me you love me and I’ll stop. _

And in-between screams, Sansa did. Over and over again she showed Ramsay that she loved him until she wasn’t sure herself.

The pit in Sansa’s stomach widens and threatens to swallow her whole. She lies there in the pinching cold with eyes glazed over like newly-cut glass until a hoarse vonce penetrates the dreamy silence around her. By then the tears on her cheek and in her eyelashes have frozen to tiny, salty crystals. Before she can react, Jon is rubbing her hands between his. Sansa’s skin is so cold that every touch from him is like a lick of fire, she leans the rest of her body into Jon’s delicious warmth with a breathy whimper. She rubs her face into his shoulder and wraps her arms around him tightly, it feels like home. Ramsay had always been cold when he came to her chambers, cold on the outside and colder on the inside.

_Still think you’ll fall in love someday, sweetling? Maybe you will but you’ll still be mine, when you’re with him you’ll think of me_.

Sansa feels nothing but emptiness as Jon wraps her in blankets by the fire, checks her temperate, and brings her some herbal tea that‘s supposed to prevent colds. She sips silently, her knees pulled to her chest like a child. Jon watches her shyly, the reflection of the fire dancing in his soft dark eyes like promises, and Sansa hopes it melts some of the ice in her own eyes as well. Jon is warm and Sansa is warm with him; if only for a little while, if only by this fire.

Eventually the tea is gone and Jon moves towards her; this is their ritual, he’ll approach her ever so carefully as if she’s a wild animal to be approached with caution. Sansa will let him most of the time, and with every inch that she doesn’t protest his confidence grows until she is in his arms. Sometimes Sansa wishes he’d just grab her, that he wouldn’t make her decide for herself. But she knows that’s wrong and so she never says it.

They hold each other for many long moments, the fire’s heat kissing their flesh and glistening in the copper of Sansa's hair. Jon is as perfect as a song, beautiful and gentle and strong. Still Sansa feels empty, she just wants to cry and more than that she wants a good reason to cry. When she finally pries herself away from Jon, she notices the stains of her tears on his shoulder. Jon wipes it off with the back of his hand, Ramsay would have licked it off or made her lick it off.

_ I want all of you. You’re going to give me everything. _

Sansa cries again, all her tears should be used up by now but still they fall down her cheeks and no one licks them off her. _Stupid little girl_. Jon looks lost, wanting to hold her again but knowing it will not comfort her. Sansa wishes that it would, she wants more than anything to want his gentle, perfect love but all she wants is to be hurt until the world disappears, to cry and scream until she can’t anymore.

_Tell me you want this. Beg for it._

"I'm sorry, I -"

"You have nothing to be sorry for, you never did, Sansa. You never did.” He sounds so tired but still so gentle, it makes Sansa’s heart ache. It’d be simpler if he was just angry at her.

Sansa doesn’t know what to say, Jon says that all the time and she doesn’t know how to make Jon see just how broken she really is, so she just turns around and walks to her chambers. Jon follows, a bold move for him, and she thinks about asking to be alone but decides against being alone with her untrustworthy thoughts.

Sansa falls into a restless sleep as Jon caresses her head and in her _dirty dreams_, it is Ramsay stroking her hair and murmuring sweet nothings.

In the dream she aches all over like she did every day of her marriage. Ramsay does not apologize, he never does, but he says something Sansa needs to hear even more: _I love you _

Ramsay says it with the same defeated heaviness Sansa feels sitting on her gut and she believes him. "I love you" Sansa repeats like the little bird she is, the words taste like puke in her mouth and she believes them. It had long ago become easier to believe the bad things and harder to believe the good.

Sansa woke quietly. She learned the hard way not to wake up screaming, she’s learned everything the hard way.

_Slow learner. Stupid girl. Useless whore. _

The dream was stupid, Sansa thought, she already knew the answer to that question.

“Do you love me?" Sansa had asked one morning when he was in a good mood and she was feeling brave. The question was not quite a plea.

Ramsay smiled at her; not quite cruel, never quite kind.

_ No, sweetling. I don’t love you anymore than a dog loves a rabbit. But I think I would if I could. _

Ramsay seemed to have more words on his tongue but said no more of them, he just kissed her. It was not quite a kiss, it was all teeth and tongue and salt.

As she gets up to leave the dream behind her, Sansa realizes she is alone in her chambers. She tries to swallow the sudden wave of panic that takes hold of her but she can’t. Sansa doesn’t even think to change out of yesterday’s dress, she just wraps herself in her fur coat, steps into a pair of half-tied winter boots, and half-runs down the hall. Sansa can’t breathe, her chest is too tight like when Ramsay kicked her in the stomach and knocked the wind out of her.

_Poor little girl. You can’t even breathe without your master, can you? _

Jon is speaking with his advisors when Sansa barges through the door like a mad-woman, her hair spilling out of her braid and face flushed with exertion. Jon doesn’t hesitate before excusing himself and ushering her out the door away from judgmental eyes.

“Are you okay?” Jon asks before an extremely embarrassed Sansa can start apologizing.

“Yes, it’s nothing. I just didn’t know where you were but I’m fine, I’ll just go clean myself up.”

Sansa makes to walk away but Jon’s apology stops her in her tracks.

“I’m sorry, Sansa. I should have told you where I was going, maybe left a note, I just had an early meeting today and I didn’t want to disrupt your sleep.”

Sansa gives him a bittersweet smile that says ‘there’s nothing to forgive’ and walks away. She doesn’t see Jon’s stare that says ‘I love you’.


	2. Chapter 2

The nights are always the worst. Sansa still finds herself staring at the door of her chamber waiting for Ramsay to come through. A disturbingly familiar mixture of dread and anticipation swirling in her stomach.

One time she tried to remember Ramsay’s death hoping that would help, she closed her eyes and watched Jon cutting off his head over and over again. She saw Jon, her gentle wolf of a brother, lose his composure and beat Ramsay into the mud until he caught her horrified gaze. She saw Jon grab the back of Ramsay’s collar like a dog and drag him to the block. She saw the moment when her eyes had met Ramsay’s, like poisonously-bright blue flowers in a garden of blood and bruised flesh.

For a moment, Sansa thought she saw something human in the icy depths of Ramsay’s eyes, something almost tender, and for a moment she almost regretted running away and bringing back Jon’s army. Only for a moment and then there was a sickeningly wet crunch and Ramsay’s head rolled. She was still staring at it, just a mess of black hair in a pool of black-red blood, when Jon pulled her away.

Sansa figured out hiding under the covers and waiting for a monster that’ll never come back is more comforting than remembering a man’s death. Even a man so sadistic as Ramsay Bolton.

_Has anyone ever said you have a tender heart, Sansa? Did you think it was a compliment? No, sweetling, it was a threat. _

After at least an hour of staring at the door then rolling over and then rolling back over to look at it again, Sansa has had enough. She lays on her side facing the door and closes her eyes as tight as she can. Only when her eyes are closed does Sansa reach between her legs and slide her hand under her panties. Roughly, she forces three fingers into herself, muffling her cries into the pillow. Ramsay never let her muffle herself. He loved to hear her pain in her cries, see it in her eyes, feel it in her trembling, and taste it in her tears. Sometimes she even wondered if he could smell fear and if he liked that too.

Sansa manages to get all five fingers in, her tension seeping out with the burn of it. It takes her a while to find her clit, when she does she ruts against it hard like a dog in heat. Until she’s on the edge of orgasm then she stops.

_That’s it. Good girl_.

With her eyes still closed, Sansa imagines Ramsay’s eyes that he’d always force her to look into, two arctic seas swimming with madness and sadism, the memory sends shivers of fear through her. It’s the fear that she finally orgasms to.

The tension is gone from Sansa’s body, she no longer feels the need to watch the door. All she’s left with is shame, heavy and suffocating shame.

_This is all you’re good for, just my baby whore._

Being alone in the dark with her shame and the ache between her legs and Ramsay’s voice lingering in her mind is too much and Sansa practically runs out of the room. She doesn’t even think about where she’s running until she’s in front of the fire that she’d started to think of as her and Jon’s fire.

Sansa feeds and kindles the fire, the smell comforts her more than the heat. It brings her back to the night she made it to Castle Black, she’d thought her suffering was over then. She thought she’d left Ramsay for good but here she is still aching inside and out.

Sansa doesn’t hear Jon come in but she doesn’t startle when he sits beside her.

“Are you okay?”

“No, Jon, but I will be. We both will.”

Before Jon can respond, Sansa kisses him. At first it’s barely a whisper of a kiss then Jon’s fingers are in her hair pulling her closer. Somehow the kiss is more intimate and more gentle than anything they’ve ever felt.

“I love you.” Sansa breathes into Jon’s mouth.

“I love you too.” Jon doesn’t hesitate and Sansa tries to believe him, someday she will and he’ll say it again and again until that day comes.

Sansa knows this isn’t the end, she knows one true love’s kiss won’t erase the monster from her mind but it’s something, it’s hope, and that’s enough for two broken wolves of Winterfell.


End file.
